In the world of action movies, every character has some kind of crazy backstory, but there are only so many times a character can turn out to be the son of an infamous assassin or a child tragically orphaned by the mob and raised in an inner city dive bar before the movie officially becomes a comedy. Then you find out that those things happened to Woody Harrelson and Dylan McDermott in real life, and you realize actors’ lives are sometimes way crazier than any character they played in a movie …
5
Woody Harrelson’s Dad Was a Contract Killer
Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images
Woody Harrelson has enjoyed a long and fruitful career, with such memorable roles as Woody on Cheers and a recent turn as a detective on True Detective. He also frequently plays Jesse Eisenberg’s stepfather. Woody is such a likeable, laid-back guy that it’s hard to believe his father was a cold-blooded contract killer who murdered people at the behest of criminals.
Scott Griessel/iStock/Getty Images We had our money on long-haired Deadhead marijuana activist at 3-1 odds.
Charles Harrelson walked out on his wife and three sons in 1968, which was only the third worst thing he did that year. After being acquitted for a murder he probably committed thanks to a bush league prosecutor, Charles was hired to kill another person so the victim’s business partner could collect insurance money. Amazingly, he got off again, this time on a mistrial, because Texas’ judicial system in the ’60s was apparently the equivalent of a first-turn guess in a game of Clue. Let that sink in — Charles Harrelson killed two people in one year and got away with it both times.
The state got their shit together and tried Charles again five years later, sentencing him to 15 years in jail. Prison straightened Charles out, and he dedicated the rest of his life to his family. This is another way of saying that he got out of prison after serving only five years of his sentence and immediately murdered a judge. The parole board was batting a thousand that year.
moodboard/moodboard/Getty Images “But what about all the people we paroled who didn’t commit murder?”
The judge in question had a reputation for tough sentences, and Charles was hired to kill him by a drug dealer who was about to stand trial. Shockingly, their plan to avoid punishment for a major crime by committing a second major crime didn’t work out, and everyone involved went to prison. This story was actually referenced in No Country for Old Men, a film that featured Woody Harrelson getting murdered by a character who, according to the brother of one of Charles’ victims, is eerily similar to Charles himself. That’s like an Escher painting brought to horrible life.
Charles also claimed that he shot JFK during a six-hour standoff with the police while he was high on cocaine. The incident got Woody’s attention, and upon learning that his father was a multiple murderer, Woody promptly befriended him and sunk several million dollars into trying to get Charles a retrial. Before his death in 2007, Woody described Charles as “one of the most articulate, well-read, charming people I’ve ever known,” and also said, “I look at him as someone who could be a friend more than someone who was a father.” And now we’re scared of Woody Harrelson.
And while we’re on the subject of Cheers alums …
4
Everyone Kelsey Grammer Has Ever Loved Has Died Tragically
Kevin Winter/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images
Kelsey Grammer’s neurotic radio therapist Frasier Crane (featured in both Cheers and the aptly titled Frasier) taught us that stuffy, rich intellectuals are hilarious. But it’s painfully ironic that Grammer found success in comedy, because his biography reads like the most excruciatingly tragic hero’s trial we’ve ever seen.
Danny Smythe/iStock/Getty Images “It’s depressing to read alone! Take this.”
Kelsey’s father, Frank Allen Grammer, Jr., was shot to death on his front lawn by a deranged cab driver for absolutely no reason. The man had no connection to Frank whatsoever — he showed up at Frank’s house, lit the family car on fire to lure him outside, then shot him to death. Just for the hell of it. Then, when Kelsey was 20 and had just been expelled from Juilliard, his younger sister Karen was waiting for her boyfriend in a Red Lobster parking lot when a gang of thieves showed up to rob the place. When they spotted Karen, they decided they couldn’t leave a witness and brutally murdered her to cover their tracks.
You might think this would be the point where we say, “But luckily things began looking up for Kelsey,” but you would be wrong. Dead wrong. Just five years later, Grammer’s two half-brothers, Stephen and Billy, were killed in a bizarre scuba diving accident wherein one of them was probably eaten by sharks. That’s not a glib joke at the expense of Kelsey Grammer’s family — one of his two half-brothers was almost certainly killed by a fucking shark.
Because the universe just couldn’t stop shitting on Kelsey Grammer, his good friend and longtime producer David Angell was killed in the terrorist attacks on September 11. And Ben Novack, one of Kelsey’s best friends for over 40 years, was murdered by his own wife in a double-homicide inheritance scheme. We kind of want to track Grammer down and give him a great big bear hug.
Kevin Winter/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images Or at least give him the “It’s not your fault” speech.
Two of his wives were physically abusive and emotionally unstable (nothing against Kelsey, but that’s kind of what happens when you marry a stripper immediately after meeting her). When he tried to leave his former exotic dancer wife, she locked herself in a hotel room and attempted suicide. She survived, but the couple’s unborn child did not. Kelsey Grammer’s life has essentially been one extended Greek tragedy.
CBS Television Distribution “Cruel fate — I’m listening.”
3
Dylan McDermott Lived a Scorsese Film
Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images
Dylan McDermott is famous for playing a sexy lawyer on The Practice and a string of roles as sexy villains in American Horror Story, Hostages, and Olympus Has Fallen.
Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images
And for his starring role in Goddamnit, for the Last Time, I’m Not Dermot Mulroney.
As it turns out, there’s a reason he frequently gets cast as Handsome Bad Guy — Dylan was born Mark Anthony McDermott to the teenage girlfriend of a gangster named John Sponza (although Sponza was not his biological father). Unfortunately, Sponza wasn’t a singing and dancing gangster like in West Side Story or Guys and Dolls so much as a heroin addict racketeer like in Donnie Brascoand Goodfellas. In 1962, when Dylan was 5, Sponza further challenged his reputation by murdering Dylan’s mother, a crime he wasn’t convicted of until 50 years later in 2012 (Sponza himself was found shot dead in the trunk of a car in 1972, so the conviction was largely symbolic).
Dylan went to live with his grandmother for a while in a neighborhood that was so bad that a burglar once stole the underwear out of his dresser. Deciding that he didn’t want to spend the rest of his adolescence padlocking his underwear drawer, he tracked down his bartending father in New York City. Dylan helped his dad out, and by “helped” we mean he broke up fights, cleaned up pools of vomit, and served 8 a.m. beers to men who would make Nick Nolte look like a solid job interview candidate. Working in a sketchy bar with your estranged dad after your mother gets murdered by a career gangster sounds like the plot of the darkest sitcom in television history.
jordan_rusev/iStock/Getty Images “– find out who’s really calling the Shots! Fridays on NBC!”
Dylan could have easily grown up shaking down deadbeats and powdering people’s kneecaps with a baseball bat if it wasn’t for his stepmother, Eve Ensler (whom you may recognize as the author of The Vagina Monologues). She knew that handsome people can get paid way more pretending to be villainous thugs, so she encouraged Dylan to get into acting, and despite being only a few years older than Dylan, she even legally adopted him years after she divorced his father, which is only the tiniest bit creepy.
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2
Olivia Newton-John’s Parents Were Nazi-Fighting War Refugees
Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
You probably know Olivia Newton-John from her leading role in the film Xanadu, although it’s possible that you also saw her in Grease. Additionally, she’s responsible for the song “Physical,” which everyone born in 1981 was conceived to.
Geffen Records Craft services on the shoot was just bananas and melons.
But it’s Olivia’s parents who are the real story, because the lives of Irene Born and Brinley Newton-John read like a subplot from Inglourious Basterds. Irene was the daughter of Max Born, a Nobel Prize-winning atomic physicist and one of the founding fathers of quantum mechanics. Her family was forced to flee Germany after the Nazis took over, and it was in England where Irene met Brinley.
Brinley was born in Wales, but despite that disadvantage, he grew up to be a brilliant linguist who earned a double major from Cambridge, which is a school for people who think Harvard is adorable. During World War II, Brinley’s fluency in German led him to a job interrogating captured Nazi pilots. Forgoing the standard torture and intimidation, Brinley would take the pilots out for dinner and drinks. He figured that people are generally more willing to give you information if you’re being friendly, rather than if you’re smashing them in the crotch with a fuel canister. His technique worked so well that it was adopted by Ian Fleming, which makes us wonder if there’s a rough draft of a Bond novel wherein 007 and Goldfinger just get drunk and hug things out.
Eon/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer “Yeah, he was totally cool after I got him laid. We turned the giant laser into a vaporizer.”
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One of his interrogations led to the capture of Rudolf “I’m Crazy Even by Nazi Standards” Hess, the Deputy Fuhrer who launched an unauthorized one-man mission to negotiate a treaty between Britain and Germany that (spoilers!) didn’t quite pan out.
Later in the war, Brinley joined Bletchley Park, MI5’s code-breaking headquarters. Brinley was part of a team that had to quickly and accurately translate decoded German messages into the Queen’s English. Brinley himself translated the secret German battle plans for El Alamein, which you may recognize as a level in Call of Duty 2 (and, to a lesser degree, as an important turning point in World War II). So, to sum up, Olivia Newton-John’s father helped win a major battle and capture one of the highest-ranking Nazis (and was also a kickass opera singer), and her mother was the war refugee daughter of one of the greatest minds in atomic science. Olivia, meanwhile, grew up to make Christmas albums with John Travolta.
So, in a way, this is just another atrocity the Nazis are responsible for.
1
Jackie Chan’s Mother Was a Drug Baron Who Married the Cop Who Caught Her
We all know Jackie Chan as the loveable star of ridiculous action comedies and the gentle recipient of 50 percent of Chris Tucker’s racism. Given his astounding success and lighthearted personality, you’d assume he was born into relative privilege, but his family background is filled with so much despair and intrigue, it could have been written by John le Carre.
Jackie’s father, Charles Chan (not Charlie Chan), had the misfortune of living through the Chinese Civil War, one of the worst periods in Chinese history. Charles found himself serving as an orderly to a Nationalist general when he was only a teenager.
Then the Second Sino-Japanese War began, which was essentially the opening act of World War II, and Charles became a Nationalist spy working against Japanese aggressors before growing sick of government corruption and quitting to become a port inspector in Shanghai. It’s remarkably like the origin story of a Jackie Chan character, if his movies were set to a background of war, genocide, and widespread human suffering.
New Line Cinema Not counting the widespread human suffering of watching Rush Hour 3.
While Charles was trying to be one good cop in a world of corruption, Jackie’s mom, Lee-Lee, took the “underworld kingpin” route. After her previous husband was killed by a Japanese bomb, she was forced to abandon her daughters and make a living in Shanghai. She soon discovered she had a talent for the humble professions of gambling and opium smuggling, and before long she had earned the street nickname of Big Sister. Her operation eventually ran afoul of port inspector Charles Chan, but instead of a climactic rooftop karate battle, they decided to get married, because that’s way less exhausting and requires fewer warm-up stretches.
But the 1940s had a habit of being terrible for everyone, and the civil war ended with China under Communist control. A former Nationalist spy and a drug-peddling crime boss were two of the many things the new government frowned upon, so the Chans fled to Hong Kong, where Jackie was born a few years later, presumably doing a series of dangerously wacky stunt falls through the delivery room.
Contrary to popular opinion,Teknodid not pay a compensation to Danfo Drivers for using their material on his single Jogodo.
Following the release ofJogodo, Danfo Driver called out Tekno in an interview for sampling their song with permission and threatened to take actions against him if he did not make moves to correct his wrongs. Tekno reacted fast to the video and he reached out to his senior colleagues. He even shared a picture of him spending time with them on his Instagram page, sending a message that they have reconciled and it was rumored that he compensated them with money.
According to GoldmyneTV, one of the members of the Danfo Drivers group, Mountain Black admitted that indeed Tekno has been forgiven after he visited them in Abuja. But, he cleared the wrong notion that they were paid.
“We didn’t collect any money from Tekno; you can ask him. The deed has been done; we cannot reverse it any longer. He planned to release the video of the song last week. He asked if he could go ahead and we gave him our permission. But I told him we could do a remix later”, he said.
According to the report, Mountain Black said that they reacted angrily because Tekno did not treat them well. He revealed that they had earlier agreed that they would see at the Eko Hotel in Lagos after the Headies Award but Tekno refused to pick their calls.
“Why would you release a job without telling the owner of the song? When he called that he wanted to see us, I told him we were busy but we should meet at the Headies and he said it was okay. We were invited for the Headies at the Eko Hotel and he lives very close. On that day, we called him and he was not picking up. That was why I granted an interview where I said we were looking for Tekno.
“Last week Wednesday, he called that he was coming to see us in Abuja. So, he came down to Abuja and apologised for what he did. I told him we were not interested in his money but we wanted him to work together with us as a team”, he said.
Mountain Black further stated that the rush to release materials is the reason why artistes of this generation like Tekno, resort to remaking past songs.
Brooklyn Nine-Ninewascancelled, but the show’s demise lasted just 24 hours before NBC stepped into the breach to revive it.
Fox’s decision to cancel the series led to an outpouring of support for the sitcom on social media, with celebrity fans lending their voice, which then led to NBC seeing the value in picking it up for a sixth run, set to air in the mid-season. NINE NINE!
15. Quantico
ABC
The Priyanka Chopra-starring thriller had already been on borrowed time, just scraping a renewal last year after its viewers halved from its first season, and after a continued decline the show has been wrapped after three seasons.
The show had started as an engaging mystery, complete with multiple timelines, but lost its way after continuing past what was perhaps a natural resolution, changed its showrunner, and never really recovered.
14. Life Sentence
The CW
One of just two shows cancelled by The CW, the series has always looked set for a life sentence in cancellation hell. The new series has been stuck at the bottom of The CW’s ratings, pulling in less than half-a-million viewers a week and just 0.18 in the key 18-49 demo since its mid-season debut.
The comedy-drama centres on a woman whose terminal cancer is cured, and then has to face-up to the choices she made when loving each day as if it were her last (dancing all night, having a blast). Critics and viewers found the show cloying, and there’ll be no reversing this diagnosis.
13. Rise
NBC
NBC had high hopes when Rise debuted, with a strong premiere thanks to a lead-in from the Winter Olympics, but the ratings instead continued to fall week-after-week.
The high-school musical comedy, which starred HIMYM’s Josh Radnor and was created by Friday Night Light’s Jason Katims, received mixed reviews and couldn’t find a major audience, with fewer than a million viewers on average among 18-49-year-olds, although its overall ratings (over 4m) meant a cancellation wasn’t nailed on.
12. The Mick
Fox
The Mick, a black comedy which saw Kaitlin Olson’s Mickey raising her niece and nephews after their parents are arrested, has had its life cut short after just two seasons and 26-episodes.
Despite the comic talents of It’s Always Sunny’s Olson in the lead role, the show struggled for consistency with its humour and storylines, leading to a viewership of just 0.73m among 18-49-year-olds, the same amount that saw Brooklyn Nine-Nine cancelled by the bloodthirsty Fox network too.
11. Valor
The CW
As with Life Sentence, military series Valor was amongst The CW’s lowest-rated shows, and it would’ve taken a miracle for it to survive.
The writing was already on the wall when the network announced they weren’t picking up additional Season 1 episodes beyond the first 13, which averaged only 0.21 in the 18-49 demo, and now it’s been officially put out of its misery after a four-month hiatus.
10. Alex, Inc
ABC
Although the premise felt a little dated – a radio journalist, husband and father of two, quit his job to launch his own podcast startup – there was reason to be hopeful for Alex, Inc, because it reunited Scrubs writer and producer Matt Lares with its star, Zach Braff in his first lead TV role since the medical sitcom ended.
Despite Braff’s likeability, however, the series failed to get off the ground. The reviews were poor, and the show didn’t have a great deal to recommend it to viewers, who subsequently didn’t tune in, leading to ABC cancelling the series after just nine episodes had aired.
9. Kevin Can Wait
CBS
10 years after Kevin James’ first CBS comedy ended, the actor returned to the network with a new sitcom that, ultimately, wasn’t worth the wait.
The show saw James star as a recently retired police officer, and after a poor first season retooled by killing off his wife (played by Erinn Hayes) and replacing her with Leah Remini’s Vanessa, a former rival of James’ Kevin. The handling of it garnered a lot of controversy, the ratings fell sharply (although that likely would’ve happened without the change-up), and now CBS have sent the show to the TV graveyard.
8. Inhumans
ABC
While Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s fate remains up in the air, ABC’s other Marvel series is definitely dead.
To be fair, Inhumans was pretty much dead on arrival, with the series – despite a heavy marketing push and an IMAX launch – receiving a critical mauling, disappointing fans with its long-awaited portrayal of the Inhuman Royal Family, and failing to pick up many viewers along the way.
The characters were once set to be the focus of an MCU movie, and instead ended up with just eight episodes and a single season of TV, which has all but killed them off in every medium. That’s how bad it was.
7. Taken
NBC
No one was even asking for the sequels to Taken, let alone a TV series set before the events of the film focusing on a younger version of Bryan Mills.
Clive Standen stepped into the considerable shows of Liam Neeson, who actually did an admirable job considering the material he was given to work with. The show just didn’t work and that was reflected in the ratings, where it sat bottom of NBC’s shows this year after a huge 55% drop-off in the 18-49 demo, evidence that the franchise had been, er, taken too far.
6. The Last Man On Earth
Fox
Unlike a lot of shows on this list, The Last Man On Earth had consistently strong reviews, with the show – from creator, writer, and star Will Forte – consistently smart and funny.
Unfortunately for its fans that never translated to good ratings: Season 4 may have critical acclaim, but just under 2m viewers overall (and 0.79 in the 18-49 demo) have condemned it to a life in the apocalypse, with a cliffhanger ending that’ll never be resolved and yet still somehow works as a fitting end point.
5. The Exorcist
Fox
A sequel to the 1973 horror classic, it was in much the same vein as the movie – priest deals with demonic presence targeting a family – although never managed to offer up the same level of quality scares.
The show’s second season was Fox’s lowest-rated series, dropping off by over 30% from its first season (and losing star Geena Davis), which has meant there was nothing possessing them to renew it, and there’ll be no resurrections. This one is definitely dead.
4. Great News
NBC
It’s bad news for any fans of NBC’s broadcast news sitcom, which has been canned after two seasons.
The series, which came from 30 Rock’s Tracey Wigfield and starred Briga Heelan and Andrea Martin as a mother and daughter working together in TV news, suffered a bit of a sophomore slump in terms of both critical appraisal and ratings, meaning it was always likely to be taken off the air. With just 3m viewers overall, it wasn’t great enough to scrape a third season.
3. Designated Survivor
ABC
Despite the title, the Kiefer Sutherland vehicle just couldn’t survive poor ratings and ABC’s need to create some room for its new shows.
The show, which starred Sutherland as a man who finds himself President after an explosion kills everyone in the line of succession, went through four different showrunners over just two seasons, which didn’t help its quality any. That in turn led to a serious decline in viewers, with just 0.73 in the 18-49 demo, and ABC designating this one for cancellation.
2. Lucifer
Fox
Gotham may have scraped a revival, but its fellow Fox comic book series – and Thursday night partner – wasn’t so lucky.
Lucifer has a loyal fanbase, with plenty of outcry over the decision, but unfortunately not a big enough one, although it did actually have more viewers on average than Gotham.
The end comes after three seasons, despite plenty of story being left to tell, but it’s unclear whether any other network will rescue it at this stage.
1. The Expanse
Syfy
Although not from one of the big five networks, Syfy’s cancellation of The Expanse is noteworthy in part because of how surprising it is. The show has been lauded as one of the very best sci-fi series on TV for the past couple of years, with Season 3 pulling in 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Ultimately, though, money talks, and The Expanse wasn’t worth the expense. The show was pulling in just over 500k viewers on average, and only around 0.2 in the key demo, but the quality might mean another network or streaming service – Netflix would be a good fit – could step into the breach and save it from extinction.
Fox
Brooklyn Nine-Ninewascancelled, but the show’s demise lasted just 24 hours before NBC stepped into the breach to revive it.
Fox’s decision to cancel the series led to an outpouring of support for the sitcom on social media, with celebrity fans lending their voice, which then led to NBC seeing the value in picking it up for a sixth run, set to air in the mid-season. NINE NINE!
15. Quantico
ABC
The Priyanka Chopra-starring thriller had already been on borrowed time, just scraping a renewal last year after its viewers halved from its first season, and after a continued decline the show has been wrapped after three seasons.
The show had started as an engaging mystery, complete with multiple timelines, but lost its way after continuing past what was perhaps a natural resolution, changed its showrunner, and never really recovered.
14. Life Sentence
The CW
One of just two shows cancelled by The CW, the series has always looked set for a life sentence in cancellation hell. The new series has been stuck at the bottom of The CW’s ratings, pulling in less than half-a-million viewers a week and just 0.18 in the key 18-49 demo since its mid-season debut.
The comedy-drama centres on a woman whose terminal cancer is cured, and then has to face-up to the choices she made when loving each day as if it were her last (dancing all night, having a blast). Critics and viewers found the show cloying, and there’ll be no reversing this diagnosis.
13. Rise
NBC
NBC had high hopes when Rise debuted, with a strong premiere thanks to a lead-in from the Winter Olympics, but the ratings instead continued to fall week-after-week.
The high-school musical comedy, which starred HIMYM’s Josh Radnor and was created by Friday Night Light’s Jason Katims, received mixed reviews and couldn’t find a major audience, with fewer than a million viewers on average among 18-49-year-olds, although its overall ratings (over 4m) meant a cancellation wasn’t nailed on.
12. The Mick
Fox
The Mick, a black comedy which saw Kaitlin Olson’s Mickey raising her niece and nephews after their parents are arrested, has had its life cut short after just two seasons and 26-episodes.
Despite the comic talents of It’s Always Sunny’s Olson in the lead role, the show struggled for consistency with its humour and storylines, leading to a viewership of just 0.73m among 18-49-year-olds, the same amount that saw Brooklyn Nine-Nine cancelled by the bloodthirsty Fox network too.
11. Valor
The CW
As with Life Sentence, military series Valor was amongst The CW’s lowest-rated shows, and it would’ve taken a miracle for it to survive.
The writing was already on the wall when the network announced they weren’t picking up additional Season 1 episodes beyond the first 13, which averaged only 0.21 in the 18-49 demo, and now it’s been officially put out of its misery after a four-month hiatus.
10. Alex, Inc
ABC
Although the premise felt a little dated – a radio journalist, husband and father of two, quit his job to launch his own podcast startup – there was reason to be hopeful for Alex, Inc, because it reunited Scrubs writer and producer Matt Lares with its star, Zach Braff in his first lead TV role since the medical sitcom ended.
Despite Braff’s likeability, however, the series failed to get off the ground. The reviews were poor, and the show didn’t have a great deal to recommend it to viewers, who subsequently didn’t tune in, leading to ABC cancelling the series after just nine episodes had aired.
9. Kevin Can Wait
CBS
10 years after Kevin James’ first CBS comedy ended, the actor returned to the network with a new sitcom that, ultimately, wasn’t worth the wait.
The show saw James star as a recently retired police officer, and after a poor first season retooled by killing off his wife (played by Erinn Hayes) and replacing her with Leah Remini’s Vanessa, a former rival of James’ Kevin. The handling of it garnered a lot of controversy, the ratings fell sharply (although that likely would’ve happened without the change-up), and now CBS have sent the show to the TV graveyard.
8. Inhumans
ABC
While Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s fate remains up in the air, ABC’s other Marvel series is definitely dead.
To be fair, Inhumans was pretty much dead on arrival, with the series – despite a heavy marketing push and an IMAX launch – receiving a critical mauling, disappointing fans with its long-awaited portrayal of the Inhuman Royal Family, and failing to pick up many viewers along the way.
The characters were once set to be the focus of an MCU movie, and instead ended up with just eight episodes and a single season of TV, which has all but killed them off in every medium. That’s how bad it was.
7. Taken
NBC
No one was even asking for the sequels to Taken, let alone a TV series set before the events of the film focusing on a younger version of Bryan Mills.
Clive Standen stepped into the considerable shows of Liam Neeson, who actually did an admirable job considering the material he was given to work with. The show just didn’t work and that was reflected in the ratings, where it sat bottom of NBC’s shows this year after a huge 55% drop-off in the 18-49 demo, evidence that the franchise had been, er, taken too far.
6. The Last Man On Earth
Fox
Unlike a lot of shows on this list, The Last Man On Earth had consistently strong reviews, with the show – from creator, writer, and star Will Forte – consistently smart and funny.
Unfortunately for its fans that never translated to good ratings: Season 4 may have critical acclaim, but just under 2m viewers overall (and 0.79 in the 18-49 demo) have condemned it to a life in the apocalypse, with a cliffhanger ending that’ll never be resolved and yet still somehow works as a fitting end point.
5. The Exorcist
Fox
A sequel to the 1973 horror classic, it was in much the same vein as the movie – priest deals with demonic presence targeting a family – although never managed to offer up the same level of quality scares.
The show’s second season was Fox’s lowest-rated series, dropping off by over 30% from its first season (and losing star Geena Davis), which has meant there was nothing possessing them to renew it, and there’ll be no resurrections. This one is definitely dead.
4. Great News
NBC
It’s bad news for any fans of NBC’s broadcast news sitcom, which has been canned after two seasons.
The series, which came from 30 Rock’s Tracey Wigfield and starred Briga Heelan and Andrea Martin as a mother and daughter working together in TV news, suffered a bit of a sophomore slump in terms of both critical appraisal and ratings, meaning it was always likely to be taken off the air. With just 3m viewers overall, it wasn’t great enough to scrape a third season.
3. Designated Survivor
ABC
Despite the title, the Kiefer Sutherland vehicle just couldn’t survive poor ratings and ABC’s need to create some room for its new shows.
The show, which starred Sutherland as a man who finds himself President after an explosion kills everyone in the line of succession, went through four different showrunners over just two seasons, which didn’t help its quality any. That in turn led to a serious decline in viewers, with just 0.73 in the 18-49 demo, and ABC designating this one for cancellation.
2. Lucifer
Fox
Gotham may have scraped a revival, but its fellow Fox comic book series – and Thursday night partner – wasn’t so lucky.
Lucifer has a loyal fanbase, with plenty of outcry over the decision, but unfortunately not a big enough one, although it did actually have more viewers on average than Gotham.
The end comes after three seasons, despite plenty of story being left to tell, but it’s unclear whether any other network will rescue it at this stage.
1. The Expanse
Syfy
Although not from one of the big five networks, Syfy’s cancellation of The Expanse is noteworthy in part because of how surprising it is. The show has been lauded as one of the very best sci-fi series on TV for the past couple of years, with Season 3 pulling in 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Ultimately, though, money talks, and The Expanse wasn’t worth the expense. The show was pulling in just over 500k viewers on average, and only around 0.2 in the key demo, but the quality might mean another network or streaming service – Netflix would be a good fit – could step into the breach and save it from extinction.
Pastor Paseka Motsoeneng. He has caused a stir online after asking hiscongregationto remove their underwears. [Photo/sde.co.ke]
A video of a South African Pastor who asked his congregation to removeunderwearin Church has continued to elicit mixed reactions fromKenyans.
The video, which was posted by a Zambian observer shows one Pastor Paseka Motsoeneng popularly known as Prophet Mboro, commanding the faithful to remove their pants before prayer.
The preacher shocked many in 2016 when he said that he went tohelland saw many prominent leaders from the nation there.
“When I got to hell, there was a queue of millions of people waiting to be braaied by Satan. I even saw some prominent South African politicians. I was so shocked because they lived like angels here on earth. I thought they went to heaven. When Satan saw me, he panicked and directed his army to kill me. Like Samson in the Bible, I defeated them. Satan was my last victim,”
Here are some of the reactions from social media users
Boy Gian: Churches everywhere, ever1 is apastor…..my frens this business of running achurchis very lucrative. Joseph Kimathi In a clip I saw men doing the same I wonder…
Ken Odanga: That is only possible if his church members are TOTALLY INSANE.
Roy Rumuri: bull shit, where are the morals pliz? underwear has nothing to do with pregnancy n apart from the husband only a gyna doctor allowed to order it out. Total madness. Our women belive in pastors than God n easily joining cults without knowing.
Henry Mwambela: This is sheer nonsense, the craziness of the highest order. Even the congregation is crazy & baffling to the highest degree. Go to hell.
Felix Oyuja: Until people start to see that it was all but business
Kwach Weldon:
Indecent exposure and being a public nuisance!
J
ane Murage: Ni majuju si mungu, wanaume mchunge wakewenu nasi mchezo, juu watapakwa matope
People are broken,
People are going through challenging situations,
People are struggling to feed their families,
People are dropping out of school,
People are hurting from wrong relationships,
People are dying everyday,
People are struggling to keep up with their mortgage payments and the banks are threatening,
People are waking up each day only to realize their pension pot is drying up,
People are tired… really tired,
People are losing hope.
I’ve been there before. I spent my teenage years in Lagos, Nigeria. Born to a father I lost 11 days after my 13th birthday and a mother with 5 other children, I lived 645KM away from my family.
The good life I knew changed when I lost my father to asthma and diabetes. Everything changed! We lost everything!! The years that followed would become my worst nightmare:
Almost dropped out of high school without education support
Destitute at 17
Slept in the church for months
Lived in a slum for 3 years
Hungry. Seriously hungry
Begged or stole for at least a meal
‘Hunted’ every tree in the neighbourhood for unripe fruits to eat
Cooked and ate hand-picked vegetables with salt and no other ingredient
Fanned and burned charcoal because kerosene was unaffordable
Borrowed a uniform for my final exams in high school because I could not afford one.
And at university? Oh dear, where do I start? Results withheld each year because I owed tuition, paid my way through university and stayed hungry half the time, the only child of six to achieve university education
Life was tough for me. Life was hopeless. My teenage years were unbearable. The shame was ludicrous; it just didn’t make sense most times. I nurtured a dream to go to university abroad. Many scorned me for it. They couldn’t fathom how a lad from the slum could find himself in the UK. So they laughed. Only a few listened and even fewer supported.
I remained resolute in my hope. I refused to give up. And my story changed…
graduated with First Class honours degree in Computer Science
achieved the best result at faculty level
received best graduating student award by the British Computer Society
have my portrait on the university gallery for outstanding achievements
published two books (one on sale worldwide and a free eBook available on my blog).
two more books to be released soon
speak at conferences
coach young leaders…
against all odds.
Today, I’m a living testimony of hope and I live to inspire others with my story. I didn’t sit down and curse the world for my plight. Yes, events I couldn’t control happened but I refused to resign to them.
I encourage you today: DON’T GIVE UP.
Your story will change if you keep hope alive.
Dead visions can and will be revived.
And here’s my prayer for you; that God restores hope in you to dream again.
When I joined an international pen pal club in November 1959, I had no idea how it would change my life. I was an RN at a large hospital in Bremen, in northern Germany. By December, the letters started pouring in. One letter from Sweden piqued my interest. It was from a Swedish horticulturist who lived and worked in Helsingborg. He wrote the letter in German, and soon many more of his letters crossed The Sound, or Oresund, and the Baltic Sea.
Around Easter in 1960, Nils wanted to meet. He arrived on Good Friday. On Saturday, we took a 12-mile hike in rainy April weather to Worpswede, a famous artist village in Lower Saxony, Germany. In the evening, we visited the world-renowned Ratskeller in Bremen, which housed Europe’s oldest wine barrel, dated 1653.
By this time, it was not only the wine that had warmed our hearts. Nils proposed, and we planned our wedding in Sweden for Midsommar (midsummer), a joyful annual holiday in Scandinavia in late June. Two days later, Nils flew back home, and I was left to plan the wedding by mastering piles of paperwork and fighting bureaucracy.
Now what? I did not speak Swedish and decided to cram in 10 hours of Berlitz language lessons a week before the wedding.
We drove to Helsingborg, where the marriage took place in a beautiful old kyrka (church) with Nils’ family and a few friends present. My father was still in East Germany, behind the Iron Curtain. To this day, I do not know what the pastor said, but according to the certificate, we were married!
At the end of 1962, we moved to Encinitas, California, to establish a flower business for a well-known Swedish grower. Nils built the business and eventually purchased it from his boss, changing from carnations to roses shipped around the U.S.
We became U.S. citizens and adopted two children. Nils and I did a lot of volunteer work in the community and received many awards.
Nils died at home in 2004 when he was 82. We had a blessed 43-year marriage after our Swedish/German courtship blitz.
1. He always brags about you. If you get a promotion at work or even just win concert tickets, he can’t resist telling everyone you hang out with before you even think to mention it. Because he’s your biggest fan (arguably next to your mom).
2. He makes sacrifices for you — and you’re happy to do the same for him. He’ll move cities to live with you if you get a new job or finish grad school. You’re happy to make the next move for one of his opportunities.
3. He shares the same values as you. You know you both want kids and expect to split the child care equally. Or maybe you know you both want kids and he wants to take extended paternity leave. Maybe you’ve also agreed that you should each get 45 minutes to yourself to go to the gym every day, or you plan to buy a home and move to the suburbs in five years. You know you’re on the same page with things that matter most to you because you’ve discussed them.
4. Even after years together he still does little chivalrous things for you. Like open doors for you, or carry you to your doorstep when your feet hurt after wearing high heels all day and you just can’t bear to walk one more block.
5. He doesn’t try to change you. He knows you’re messier than him, that you always need a pet cat, and can’t cook to save your life, and all of that is all right by him.
6. When you think about marrying him, the best part isn’t the wedding, it’s the idea of spending your lives together. The wedding is fun, but you really can’t wait for the two weeks right after when you’ll get uninterrupted honeymoon time.
7. You survived a long-distance relationship. It was hard and scary, but you love each other so much that you were able to make the necessary sacrifices to make it through with a singular goal in mind: living in the same place and being together when it was all over.
8. “I miss you” isn’t just a sweet thing you say. It’s a reality. Even if it hasn’t been that long (like, two hours) since you saw each other.
9. You don’t like having a roommate and love having your own space, but you’d still prefer to live with him. You look forward to the end of the day, not because you’ll be done with work but because you’ll get to see him again.
10. He’s your go-to person whenever you have a story to share, about work, about friends, about anything. You used to tell your parents and friends about all these things, but now you don’t call them quite as much as you used to. They don’t mind because they see how happy you are.
11. You feel comfortable planning things six months — or a year — into the future. You’re not worried you’ll have to cancel plane tickets or say you won’t be needing a plus-one after all. You feel that confident in your relationship.
12. You can cry in front of him without feeling embarrassed. He knows when to worry and when you’re just caught up in a scene of a movie.
13. When your friends complain about their significant others or the guys they’ve gone out with, you get kind of quiet because you don’t have much to contribute. You don’t want to brag, but you just don’t have to deal with any of that nonsense because your significant other is great to you.
14. He’s close with your family, and he’s made sure you’ve gotten to know his. He’ll call your dad or your grandma without any hesitation. It just makes sense that you’d go to his nephew’s birthday party, even if he’s not there.
15. He cares about your friends. If one of them is having a bad day, he suggests you go spend time with her or invite her to join the two of you for dinner. If he hasn’t heard someone’s name in a while, he asks how she’s doing.
16. He lets you vent. Sometimes when something frustrates you, you just need to go over it again and again. He doesn’t get annoyed at this, and he dismisses your apologies. The only thing that bothers him about the situation is that you’re upset and he wishes you weren’t.
17. He tells you, out of the blue, that you look hot. And it’s on the day you didn’t dry your hair or put on makeup or even change out of your T-shirt and sweatpants.
18. You can do things like travel together without fighting all the time. We’ve all seen (or been) that tragic couple fighting over where to get lunch at the airport so badly that one of them devolves into tears and puts her shades on indoors and lies across three seats in the terminal. You can do tedious things with your S.O. without all this fighting.
19. He plans activities that he knows you’ll enjoy. He doesn’t depend on you to be in charge of everything, and he remembers that you said you wanted to go to that new restaurant or museum exhibit.
20. He works hard at his job, but you’re his priority. If you ask him to go to an event that’s important to you, he’s not afraid to step out of the office to accompany you. He’ll figure out a way to get his work done, just as you would do for him.
Pregnant Woman Slumps After Slap By An Officer In Lagos (Watch Video)
This is very unfortunate. A Naval personnel caused a huge scene along Oshodi expressway in Lagos after slapping a pregnant woman.
The woman collapsed after receiving the slap from the officer as people gathered in their numbers to know why a man would slap a woman in public to the extent of her collapsing.
The woman was later helped by some passersby who were in the vicinity at the moment.
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